[Verizon] GS4 Root

Whats up guys, I'm still waiting on my Verizon GS4 to arrive, and I've been doing a lot of research on some rooting and what not. I've never rooted a phone before. So I'm 100% noob. I've read that when rooted, EVERYTHING is deleted off the phone. If I decide to eventually root my GS4, all I'll want off is Verizons bloatware, and a few of the Touch Wiz doodads. Is it possible to pick and choose in that sense? Or is it pretty much everything goes or nothing goes?

Whats up guys, I'm still waiting on my Verizon GS4 to arrive, and I've been doing a lot of research on some rooting and what not. I've never rooted a phone before. So I'm 100% noob. I've read that when rooted, EVERYTHING is deleted off the phone. If I decide to eventually root my GS4, all I'll want off is Verizons bloatware, and a few of the Touch Wiz doodads. Is it possible to pick and choose in that sense? Or is it pretty much everything goes or nothing goes?

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Rooting does not (typically) wipe the phone. Unlocking the bootloader often does, however.

The nice thing is that you will be able to disable most bloatware apps, even without root. So if that's your main focus for rooting, you may not need to root.

While a one click would be nice, it is a bit early to expect that on a phone just released. Still, the steps to root are actually rather simple if you have them layed out. It took me about 8 minutes to do. Here are all the steps I followed.

Boot phone into ODIN mode (power down, hold in down volume, home & power)
Flash the VRUAMD2 Prerelease Kernel using ODIN v3.07 ***in PDA section only*** (See here for guide on flashing)
Boot back to Android and verifying everything is still working and kernel has flashed successfully

Step 3 - Rooting Your Device

Verify in Security on your device that you have "Unknown sources" checked
Verify in Developer options setting on your device that you have "USB debugging" checked
Verify in Developer options setting on your device that you have "Verify apps via USB" unchecked
Connect your phone to your computer and open "Run.bat" file from the location you have extracted motochopper to
If successful, after your phone reboots, open SuperSU app and let the binary update itself to the latest ***IMPORTANT*** - You will loose root on the next step if you do not do this.
Once complete, just open a root application and verify that is able to access root properly

Step 4 - Restoring VRUAMDK Stock Kernel

Boot phone into ODIN mode (power down, hold in down volume, home & power)
Flash the VRUAMDK Stock Kernel using ODIN v3.07 ***in PDA section only*** (See here for guide on flashing)
Boot back to Android and verifying everything is still working and kernel has flashed successfully
After your phone boots back to Android, you should now be fully rooted and on the fully original stock firmware as the device came

After rooting I wanted to also install ClockworkMod. That took a bit of digging, here is how I did it.